


the truth belongs to them

by hellsteeth



Category: The X-Files
Genre: Alternate Universe - Historical, F/M, Government Conspiracy, Ufology, includes art!!!!!, men in black but the real ones who scared witnesses in the 50s and 60s, shady government reps by day and lovers by night
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-24
Updated: 2020-08-24
Packaged: 2021-03-06 21:21:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26085598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hellsteeth/pseuds/hellsteeth
Summary: They are the boogiemen of the world of UFO researchers, two figures clad in black that manage to hunt down every last witness to close encounters. They are at the scene of every sighting in record time, collecting each bit of information, no matter how insignificant it may seem. By the time they are gone, there is no physical evidence to prove that they ever visited and no human will attest to their presence.
Relationships: Fox Mulder/Dana Scully
Comments: 2
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

1961

The truth is out there, but it belongs to them.

Their work is in the truth, but officially their work doesn’t exist at all. Neither do they. Not officially, anyways.

They’re very good at what they do. That’s why they’ve been paired together. He excels at getting into the heads of witnesses, convincing them that what they’ve seen was all an illusion or hallucination. She handles the science, rolling every detail concerning flying saucers and little grey men around in her head until she can deduce whether the stories are to be taken seriously. This is by design. They make an excellent team.

They are the boogiemen of the world of UFO researchers, two figures clad in black that manage to hunt down every last witness to close encounters. They are at the scene of every sighting in record time, collecting each bit of information, no matter how insignificant it may seem. By the time they are gone, there is no physical evidence to prove that they ever visited and no human will attest to their presence.

 _The men in black_. She rolls her eyes at the nickname they’ve been given, which is usually passed around in hushed, terrified tones at NICAP meetings like a ghost story. But it had gotten back to them eventually, just like everything did. He tells her to ignore the name, that the less accurate the description of them, the better. She shrugs and glances down at their clothing, dark as night, and tells him that maybe they ought to switch to yellow, then. He laughs and shakes his head good-naturedly, fingers clacking away on his typewriter.

.

There are secrets that exist between only them. The way their bodies fit together on motel room beds. The heavy breaths and hushed whispers, the way her voice becomes high and breathy as she comes and the way he holds her so tightly and kisses her neck as he follows her over the edge. The way his strong arms encircle her waist and pull her impossibly closer to him as their lips meet, his hands in her hair.

Her lipstick on his collar. The marks of his long fingers bruised into her waist. The only remnants of moments that are shared by them and them alone. It’s thrilling, just another layer of secrecy that they indulge in. A truth that is more real to them than all of the facts they’ve acquired combined.

They possess more secrets about the universe than any other person on the planet, but flying saucers and abduction stories are meaningless compared to their private universe contained behind closed doors.

.

Everything changes when she is taken from him. He is thrown into action, sparing no time to wallow in the despair that being without her has caused him. He uses all of his connections, pulls every possible string and loose thread until his fingers bleed. For weeks he is stuck in the bargaining stage of grief, telling himself that this must be the work of the esoteric beings they’ve spent so long chasing. But he’s a smart man, and he has all of the available facts laid out in front of him (though there aren’t many). He can only lie to himself for so long.

The way in which her abduction was orchestrated, as well as the fact that he can tell the difference between authentic unexplained phenomena and easily explained nonsense leaves him with only one rational explanation.

They’ve taken her. _They._ The mysterious, shapeless group that they report to. It’s hard to say who has authority over them exactly, since they operate outside of conventional federal government agencies. Dread seeps into him like ice water, freezing him in the horror of what he has realized. He could fight and rally against aliens, invaders or flying saucers. But despite the feeling of authority that came with his job, he is absolutely powerless now.

Still, there is not a force on Earth (or in the universe, for that matter) that can keep him from seeking her out, the job and their mysterious puppet masters be damned. He plans, secrets upon secrets bouncing around one head instead of two. He continues with his work during the day and meticulously researches at night. He’s desperate, grasping at straws. Ironically, he suddenly has sympathy for the hundreds of people they’ve terrified into silence over the years.

It is in the middle of this planning that she is returned to him, on the paper-thin edge between life and death. He is relieved, but somehow this makes him feel powerless in a new way. All that planning, he felt like he was getting close to some sort of solution, but he was kidding himself. He never had any power. They returned her because they wanted to.

That hardly matters now. She’s back, and she’s alive. He refuses to leave her bedside, casting dark looks at the mysterious figures walking the halls and hiding behind white coats as she silently fights her way back to life. A vow that nothing will separate them again is whispered to her in the middle of the night and she squeezes his hand.

.

They’re back in their old roles as soon as she is fully recovered, although there is lingering damage that is not fixed as easily as physical wounds. They’re both shaken and angry, but they haven’t known anything but their work and each other for a long time and without the former they would feel directionless. The latter keeps them grounded.

The changes come slowly, and they aren’t always affected in the same way. They’re listening to a witness describe the grief of losing a loved one under mysterious circumstances and never being believed when he stands up and walks out of the little diner they’re in briskly. She finds him on the curb, smoking a cigarette with shaky hands and pulling at his tie like it’s a noose.

Similarly, they’re listening to a young woman recount a series of experiments performed on her by little grey men while she was strapped to a table when all of the blood drains from his partner’s face. Later, he holds her carefully as she sobs against him in their motel bed. Her arms are wrapped tightly around her stomach and she has no idea why.

They still enjoy the work, to some extent. They’re good at what they do, extracting information and then silencing victims. A routine that has served them well for so long. But after a while, they both start to feel discouraged. He doesn’t voice his theory about what happened to her right away, but she has already figured it out for herself when he brings it up on a long car ride, eyes glued to the road to avoid her gaze.

After a while, they agree that they can’t justify moving on as if everything is normal, as if they don’t know that they are doing the bidding of the same people that would harm them ( _have_ harmed her). One night, in hushed tones over a few cigarettes and fingers of whiskey, she admits to him that she feels like the world’s biggest hypocrite for telling people that they never experienced what they say they did. Telling them to stay silent lest something terrible happen to them. She realizes now what a terrible punch to the stomach that threat can be when something terrible has already happened to you. Not being able to share it with other people, questioning if such a thing ever even happened, sounds like torture. There is a tightly wound ball of guilt and anxiety settled somewhere behind her sternum and she sucks on her cigarette a little harder as if the action will alleviate the sensation.

He tells her he understands what listening to these accounts day after day can do to a person. How before she was taken certain stories would remind him of his sister, hazy memories of earlier family life followed by too-long silences and custody battles. A family torn apart by a disappearance that he could never explain, despite how many things he’s learned. He tells her about the hopelessness and powerlessness of losing her, how it brought back all of the pain of losing someone in a fresh way, leaving him gasping for air.

He crushes both of their cigarette butts under his heel and they share a long look. She can tell by the determined set of his jaw that something has changed. When he looks into the steel of her blue eyes he sees anger, directed not at him but at the intangible forces in the universe that control them.

The look they share is just another secret shared between only them.

.

It would appear to the entire world that they are simply going about their job. The entire world minus them, as always.

They work during the day and diligently plan during the night. He’s reminded of the nights he spent alone while she was missing. Sometimes, he’ll reach for her sleeping form in the middle of the night or bring a hand up to the marks she’s made just under his collar to remind himself that she really is back, she’s here, and they are doing this together. They’re planning an escape, and it can only be blamed on their employers that they are so confident in their abilities to disappear without a trace. They were trained for this, after all. Not existing comes to them as easily as breathing.

It’s not particularly hard to acquire fake IDs and passports. Nor is it difficult to transfer the money they’ve accumulated from years of bullying and intimidating into new bank accounts. They get stuck on names until they agree to open a phone book and blindly choose for each other. He closes his eyes and prods at the page, his name settling on _Dana._ She’s ambivalent about it until he kisses her and she learns how the word tastes on his tongue. After that, she falls in love with being Dana Scully and falls even more deeply in love with him. One of her manicured fingers finds the name _Fox_ and he shrugs, figuring that it’s better than being hunted down and killed by their employers (though not by much). Similarly, hearing the name leave her lips while his mouth is busy at the apex of her legs makes the word almost holy to him.

It isn’t until they’re driving a car they’ve purchased with cash down the highway that the gravity of what they’ve done really sinks in. He starts laughing and almost chokes on a sunflower seed, but that only makes him laugh harder. She looks at him with raised eyebrows, like he’s crazy, until it hits her too. Suddenly, they’re laughing together, hands clasped over the gear shift. 

It’s incredibly relieving for both of them, being free.

She could say something like _let’s go home_ but they both know that they already are home. Their home is with each other, the rest of the world is simply a background noise in the long run.

When they do finally settle on a permanent home, they reserve one room for their work. Old habits die hard, and they were very good at their jobs. He spots a poster in a shop one day and buys in on an impulse, tacking it up in their little shared office. 

_I want to believe_

It’s almost funny, considering the number of events they’ve seen with their own eyes. The idea of _wanting_ to believe anything, especially regarding aliens, betrays a lack of confidence and authority that they’ve never experienced before. But this is all new for them, and the poster seemed fitting for their new arrangement.

It’s hard at first, starting from square one after having every available resource at their disposal, but they make do. When she comes home from long shifts at the hospital she jumps into reviewing reports that he’s dredged up from shady acquaintances. He takes a part-time position at the local university to make some money and build connections. The work is slow going and sometimes frustrating, but the hours of extra research and grasping at straws is worth the knowledge that they never have to answer to anybody again, that for once they are safe. Their lives are _theirs_ now.

Before long, they have a small collection of cases to work through regarding unexplained phenomena. They take time off of work when they can and drive across the country to interview witnesses. It feels strange at first, he thinks, not having to bare his teeth at them and threaten bodily harm as a goodbye. Her talents have always been rooted in science, in substantiating or disproving claims, so she continues to do so. They agree that it is different, but even on the occasions on which they don’t find satisfying answers, they still feel as if they’ve helped someone by at least listening and trying to believe them.

On one of their many road trips to a small town where flying lights were reported in the sky, they stop at a diner across the street from the town hall on a whim. He looks over at the town hall while she orders coffee for them both and glances back at her. On another whim, he asks her to marry him, down on one knee on the grimy diner floor, and she says yes. Even after so many months of living on their own, the exhilaration of making their own decisions and dictating the path of their own lives has not worn off. They’re both a little spontaneous these days. The rings and paperwork weren’t really necessary, they’ve belonged to each other for so long now, but she smiles as she looks down at the ring around her finger while sitting in the passenger seat of their car and smooths her yellow skirt down contentedly.

They drive off toward their destination, happy to pursue the unknown on their own terms. What they know for sure is what they hold most dear, and it’s each other. Between the two of them, they will always be able to figure out the rest.

The truth is out there, and it belongs to them. It always has.


	2. G-Man and G-Woman

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Art by the talented ariverofsongs on tumblr!! Please be sure to check out their art!!

([Link to ariverofsongs](https://ariverofsongs.tumblr.com/))

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Comments are always appreciated. Feel free to come talk to me or just hang out @ midwest-cryptid on tumblr.


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